


Wanting

by Ernmark (M_Moonshade)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Blow Jobs, M/M, Post Angel of Brahma, Writing Prompt, self worth issues, unplanned breath play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:30:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8403505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Moonshade/pseuds/Ernmark
Summary: After they escape Miasma together, Peter starts acting... odd.Juno decides to do something about it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This one was a writing prompt from BioMechaTronic:  
> "Juno and Peter sleeping together for the first time"

There wasn’t time to notice during the grand escape. Immediately afterward, he was busy plotting our route and stealing vehicles so we wouldn’t be traced, and I was caught up in the rush and relief of freedom to pay attention to much of anything.

I didn’t notice the change in Peter until after we arrived in a dingy motel. This was one of those places that hadn’t been up to code for years, where you had to check the carpet for bed bugs and the mattress for bodies. In short, it was the kind of place that would rent us a room without asking about all the blood.

He opened the car door for me, then stepped back. “Do you think you can walk on your own, Juno?” And when I grunted a “yeah” at him, he stayed just slightly more than arm’s length away.

That was unlike him.

On our first case together, he’d constantly been leaning into my space and wrapping his arm around my shoulder. With Engstrom, he’d pawed and preened at me like being apart was physically painful. In the tomb, he would brush the flaking blood off my neck, or check my temperature, or lean in close to make sure my eye was alright, or just trail his hand over mine without thinking. Every interaction with Peter Nureyev came with a flurry of little touches and casual intimacy.

And suddenly he rummaged in the car too long to find our stolen change of clothes, just to give me the chance to walk ahead of him. When I slowed down, he rushed ahead to unlock the door, then disappeared inside to arrange our meager luggage.

“I’ll let you take the first shower,” he said the moment I was through the door, and he pushed a threadbare motel towel into my hand. “Do you need anything?”

“Just sleep,” I said. “There any soap in there?”

“Hardly decent stuff, but it will do for washing the blood out.” He sounded so casual, so normal, that I figured I must have imagined it. So I didn’t question his motives, and just got in the shower. And maybe I let myself soak a little longer than usual—after all, I was tired and sore and still bleeding from a few places, and I hadn’t had an actual shower since before we robbed the Utgard Express.

As soon as I stepped out of the bathroom, he vanished inside it, a towel already thrown over his shoulder.

That’s when I noticed the beds: two of them, both queens. He hadn’t had a problem sleeping close to me in the cell, and we’d shared a single bed at the Oasis. But we’d also been playing a married couple at the time. Double queen beds weren’t unusual in motels like this, and after sharing a cell for as long as we had, I could understand a guy wanting to sleep on his own.

Besides, I was too exhausted to think about this any longer. I crawled into the nearest bed, wrapped myself in the covers, and let my eyelids drop. I was almost completely under when the bathroom door opened in a cloud of steam. In my doze I vaguely noticed Nureyev leaning over my bed, staring at me like I was the floor plan of some museum he needed to memorize. Then he slipped into the other bed, and I slipped into unconsciousness.

 

I woke up long after noon the next day—the first good sleep I’d had in ages. Nureyev was at the room’s table, perusing a tablet for who-even-knew-what. In front of the opposite chair sat a plate of pastries, a granola bar, and a bottle of cranberry juice, all lovingly arranged.

“Good morning, Juno,” he said, looking up from his work. “Did you sleep well?”

The entire afternoon went like that. He was considerate. Polite. Cordial, even. But he never got closer than arm’s length. He didn’t flirt. He made no innuendos.

“Are you… okay?” I asked, probably too late.

“You mean this?” he tugged a sleeve back to reveal a raw red burn on his forearm. “Hardly worth mentioning. Much as I appreciate your concern, Juno, I’m made of stronger stuff than that.” Before I could clarify, his expression grew concerned. “Are you, Juno? How is your head?”

It wasn’t the last time I tried asking over the next several days, but I never got much more than that for an answer. It was always the same: he’d shrug me off with a smile and then redirect. A few times he cut me off before I could even string the words together and steer the conversation elsewhere, probably hoping I would take the hint.

Until three days after we’d arrived at this motel. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, scouring the internet for signs of Miasma’s movements, as he always did. His head was tilted at what had become his default angle, keeping me just at the edge of his peripheral vision without ever looking directly at me. And yeah, I wanted to know what he was thinking. I wanted to know what was so important that he had to refresh that same webpage forty-five times. I wanted to know what he wasn’t telling me.

Yeah, it was starting to bother me. Maybe I even let it get to me. And so I spent a little bit too much time thinking a little bit too hard about Peter Nureyev. And at this point, after days—weeks?—of forced repetition, tuning into his mind was almost a reflex. So believe me when I say I didn’t mean to look. It was an accident, or as close to one as you could get when invading someone’s privacy comes as easily as breathing.

First came the pain, floating at the top of his awareness: constant stabs of it where his clothes rubbed against electrical burns. Beneath that, erratic spikes of fear, so cold it made me shiver. The fear that this was all a dream, that any minute now he’d wake up and the torture would begin again. The need to check every one of his pockets for those damned cards, in case he’d brought one with him, in case he needed to draw another one for Miasma’s goddamned tests. Every glint of metal brought him back to that room, to being alone at that table, to seeing knives and saws lined up on a tray, ready to dismember him the moment I needed extra motivation.

The torture had left deeper wounds than a few burns.

He was trapped in his own head, caged in on all sides by the memory. He was desperate for some kind of contact, some friendly touch to assure him that he was safe out here and not stuck in there. He wanted to reach for me and grab me tight and just hold me until he wanted to stop shaking.

But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

Every time the thought crossed his mind, he saw my face again, frantic and angry.

_“You wanna get your hands off me? This isn’t a goddamn honeymoon suite!”_

And he retreated back into himself. He shoved all that hurt and fear and trauma in a little box and buried it underneath a façade of cordial composure. And it hurt him to hold back, but he didn’t have it in him to try reaching out again. He couldn’t handle another rejection right now.

And he knew rejection was coming. It was a cold, clear certainty. After everything I’d said and done, he understood perfectly how I felt.

At least, he thought he did.

Another memory dredged through his mind; the same conversation as before, gnawed at and rehashed a thousand times.

_“Look through my memories now. Then decide whether Peter Nureyev’s baggage is worth your time… or if you and I part ways, once all this is done. The choice is yours—but I’d rather you made it now.”_

I never did give him my answer. He was gone before I could give it to him, and the escape happened too fast. There was never a good moment to say it. But in his mind, my silence said everything: I was going to walk away and leave him alone again. The only reason I hadn’t yet was that I was still too tired, too weak, too wary of Miasma. So he fed me and nursed me back to health and spent every remaining waking hour watching against her movements. And all the while braced himself for the inevitable.

He glanced at me, looking sardonic. “I don’t mind you waltzing through my mind, Juno, but I hate to be left in suspense like this. It’s terribly unfair.”

I frowned. He knew I was in there? Did he sense it somehow, or…?

Another surface thought, simple and pointed: _Your eye is bleeding._

Oh. I wiped at my eye. A speck of blood smeared my finger. “Sorry.”

“I’ve already told you I don’t mind it,” he said. “But if you’re going to pass judgement on me, I’d at least like to know the verdict.”

There was an undercurrent of feeling behind his easy smile: Resignation. He didn’t trust me not to hurt him, he’d just accepted it as the cost of being around me.

I leaned over the bed, one knee on the mattress to keep me steady. I half expected him to pull away, but he stayed perfectly still, not even breathing. Like if he didn’t move for long enough I would forget he was there.

As if that was even possible. I’d spent months trying to forget Peter Nureyev, and it never worked. It never would.

I cupped his cheek, and he let me pull him close without resistance. But he didn’t come freely, either.

“Don’t play games with me, Juno,” he said quietly.

“I’m not.” I knew he wanted to believe me. “You deserve better than this.”

His smile was wary. “Than what, Juno?”

What I meant was, he deserved better than _me_. There was so much wrong with me, and he could do so much better. But this was all I had to offer him.

So I did.

For a moment he remained frozen in indecision. Just a moment. Then the uncertainty melted, and he kissed me back.

I would tell you that they were the softest lips I’d ever kissed, but right then I couldn’t remember anyone else.

I’d dreamed about those lips. I’d lain awake for months replaying our last kiss in my mind, fantasizing about all the ways it could have ended. But fantasy and memory are imperfect copies, and mine had nothing on the real thing. I kissed him until I was dizzy from lack of oxygen, and even then I only pulled back enough to sip the air off his skin.

“I want you…” I whispered into the curve of his jaw before I knew how to finish the thought.

“Juno.” His head tipped back, and I traced my lips down his throat. He held perfectly still, but I could feel his pulse racing. My hands roved over his body, hitching up his shirt past his navel and unfastening his slacks.

“I want you to stay with me,” I babbled. “I want you to come _home_ with me and _stay_. I want to take you to dinner and wake up beside you and argue about the inspection sticker on my goddamn car with you. I want…” I buried my face in his shirt so he couldn’t hear me keep going.

Because there was still a part of me that was tuned into his mind. And even if I couldn’t hear the exact words, I could feel the regret radiating off him in waves.

I pulled myself lower and scrabbled at his waistline. “And if that can’t happen, then I want you to come back to me.”

And I would give him incentive not to take his goddamn time.

His member was like the rest of him: long, slender, and absolutely perfect. The sight of it made my mouth water, but before I could go down on him, he stopped me with a hand on my cheek.

“Juno…” His voice was thick. “Are you sure…?” I couldn’t tell if he meant the blowjob or the ridiculous life I’d put on the table. I didn’t care. The answer was the same.

“You’re the only thing I am sure about, Peter.”

It was the first time I’d called him by his first name. It was probably the first time anyone had called him by that name since New Kinshasa. And since I’d said it all of three inches from his cock, I didn’t need any Martian mind tricks to know how hearing it made him feel.

I wrapped my lips around the head, not hiding a hum of satisfaction when I heard his rough gasp. I pulled off and ran my tongue along the length of his shaft and back again, spurred on by the sounds of his heavy breathing. My own cock was rock hard and aching under my slacks, but I had no intention of interrupting this moment to let it out. Maybe he could feel my hardness against his legs, because he raised one knee, giving me something solid to grind against. The friction was enough to light me on fire. I took him back into my mouth again, and kept going, swallowing him down until I was choking on him. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want to. I just wanted him—his hands tangled in my hair, his voice cracking as he said my name, his legs twitching between my thighs, his future tied to mine until the goddamn heat death of the universe.

I could feel his abs hardening as he tensed beneath me. When he spoke, his voice was strained with effort: “Juno, I’m going to…”

I nodded frantically, my vision spotting from lack of air, and I swallowed around him one last time. When he went over the edge, I could feel every micron of it. Not just because he was coming down my throat—fuck, the _taste_ of him!—but because I was suddenly back in his head, swept away right alongside him.

He must have come to his senses before me, because I didn’t take my next breath until I felt gentle hands tugging me off his cock. My breath came in gasps, and the cold air felt rough against my raw throat, but I felt more at peace than I had in… I couldn’t remember how long. Because those were his arms around me, and his lips on my forehead, and his voice whispering my name.

And right now, for just this one moment in time, it was everything I wanted.


End file.
